Saturday, June 5, 2010
The truth behind the Israeli propaganda
by Robert Fisk: Sat Jun 05, 2010
I have, of course, been outraged at armed men boarding ships in international waters, killing passengers on board who attempt to resist and then forcing their ship to the hijackers' home port. I am, of course, talking about the Somali pirates who are preying on Western ships in the Indian Ocean. How dare those terrorists dare to touch our unarmed vessels on the high seas? And how right we are to have our warships there to prevent such terrorist acts.
But whoops! At least the Israelis have not demanded ransom. They just want to get journalists to win the propaganda war for them. Scarcely had the week begun when Israel's warrior "commandos" stormed a Turkish boat bringing aid to Gaza and shot nine of the passengers dead. Yet by week's end, the protesters had become "armed peace activists", vicious anti-Semites "professing pacifism, seething with hate, pounding away at another human being with a metal pole". I liked the last bit. The fact that the person being beaten was apparently shooting another human being with a rifle didn't quite get into this weird version of reality.
Turkish family protests that their sons wanted to be martyrs – something which most Turkish family members might say if their relatives had been shot by the Israelis – had been transformed into confirmation that they had been jihadis. "On that aid ship," a Sri Lankan texted me this week, "I had my niece, nephew and his wife on board. Unfortunately Ahmed (20-year-old nephew) got shot in the leg and now treated (sic) under military custody. I will keep you posted." He did indeed. Within hours, the press was at his family's home in Australia, demanding to know if Ahmed was a jihadi – or even a potential suicide bomber. Propaganda works, you see. We haven't seen a frame of film from the protesters because the Israelis have stolen the lot. No one has told us – if the Turkish ship was carrying such ruthless men – how their terrible plots to help the "terrorists" of Gaza were not uncovered in the long voyage from Turkey, even when it called at other ports. But Professor Gil Troy of McGill University in Montreal – in the rabid Canadian National Post, of course – was able to spout all that gunk about "armed peace activists" on Thursday.
I wasn't personally at all surprised at the killings on the Turkish ship. In Lebanon, I've seen this indisciplined rabble of an army – as "elite" as the average rabble of Arab armies – shooting at civilians. I saw them watching the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians on the morning of 18 September (the last day of the slaughter) by their vicious Lebanese militia allies. I was present at the Qana massacre by Israeli gunners in 1996 – "Arabushim" (the equivalent of the abusive term "Ayrab" in English), one of the gunners called the 106 dead civilians, more than half of them children, in the Israeli press. Then the Israeli government of Nobel laureate Shimon Peres said there were terrorists among the dead civilians – totally untrue, but who cares? – and then came the second Qana massacre in 2006 and then the 2008-09 Gaza slaughter of 1,300 Palestinians, most of them children, and then...
Well, then came the Goldstone report, which found that Israeli troops (as well as Hamas) committed war crimes in Gaza, but this was condemned as anti-Semitic – poor old honourable Goldstone, himself a prominent Jewish jurist from South Africa, slandered as "an evil man" by the raving Al Dershowitz of Harvard – and was called "controversial" by the brave Obama administration. "Controversial", by the way, basically means "fuck you".
There's doubts about it, you see. It's dodgy stuff.
But back to our chronology. Then we had the Mossad murder of a Hamas official in Dubai with the Israelis using at least 19 forged passports from Britain and other countries. And the pathetic response of our then foreign secretary, David Miliband? He called it "an incident" – not the murder of the guy in Dubai, mind you, just the forgery of UK passports, a highly "controversial" matter – and then... Well, now we've had the shooting down of nine passengers at sea by more Israeli heroes.
The amazing thing in all this is that so many Western journalists – and I'm including the BBC's pusillanimous coverage of the Gaza aid ships – are writing like Israeli journalists, while many Israeli journalists are writing about the killings with the courage that Western journalists should demonstrate. And about the Israeli army itself. Take Amos Harel's devastating report in Haaretz which analyses the make-up of the Israeli army's officer corps. In the past, many of them came from the leftist kibbutzim tradition, from greater Tel Aviv or from the coastal plain of Sharon. In 1990, only 2 per cent of army cadets were religious Orthodox Jews. Today the figure is 30 per cent. Six of the seven lieutenant-colonels in the Golani Brigade are religious. More than 50 per cent of local commanders are "national" religious in some infantry brigades.
There's nothing wrong with being religious. But – although Harel does not make this point quite so strongly – many of the Orthodox are supporters of the colonisation of the West Bank and thus oppose a Palestinian state.
And the Orthodox colonists are the Israelis who most hate the Palestinians, who want to erase the chances of a Palestinian state as surely as some Hamas officials would like to erase Israel. Ironically, it was senior officers of the "old" Israeli army who first encouraged the "terrorist" Hamas to build mosques in Gaza – as a counterbalance to the "terrorist" Yasser Arafat up in Beirut – and I was a witness to one of their meetings. But it will stay the same old story before the world wakes up. "I have never known an army as democratic as Israel's," the hapless French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said a few hours before the slaughter.
Yes, the Israeli army is second to none, elite, humanitarian, heroic. Just don't tell the Somali pirates.
I have, of course, been outraged at armed men boarding ships in international waters, killing passengers on board who attempt to resist and then forcing their ship to the hijackers' home port. I am, of course, talking about the Somali pirates who are preying on Western ships in the Indian Ocean. How dare those terrorists dare to touch our unarmed vessels on the high seas? And how right we are to have our warships there to prevent such terrorist acts.
But whoops! At least the Israelis have not demanded ransom. They just want to get journalists to win the propaganda war for them. Scarcely had the week begun when Israel's warrior "commandos" stormed a Turkish boat bringing aid to Gaza and shot nine of the passengers dead. Yet by week's end, the protesters had become "armed peace activists", vicious anti-Semites "professing pacifism, seething with hate, pounding away at another human being with a metal pole". I liked the last bit. The fact that the person being beaten was apparently shooting another human being with a rifle didn't quite get into this weird version of reality.
Turkish family protests that their sons wanted to be martyrs – something which most Turkish family members might say if their relatives had been shot by the Israelis – had been transformed into confirmation that they had been jihadis. "On that aid ship," a Sri Lankan texted me this week, "I had my niece, nephew and his wife on board. Unfortunately Ahmed (20-year-old nephew) got shot in the leg and now treated (sic) under military custody. I will keep you posted." He did indeed. Within hours, the press was at his family's home in Australia, demanding to know if Ahmed was a jihadi – or even a potential suicide bomber. Propaganda works, you see. We haven't seen a frame of film from the protesters because the Israelis have stolen the lot. No one has told us – if the Turkish ship was carrying such ruthless men – how their terrible plots to help the "terrorists" of Gaza were not uncovered in the long voyage from Turkey, even when it called at other ports. But Professor Gil Troy of McGill University in Montreal – in the rabid Canadian National Post, of course – was able to spout all that gunk about "armed peace activists" on Thursday.
I wasn't personally at all surprised at the killings on the Turkish ship. In Lebanon, I've seen this indisciplined rabble of an army – as "elite" as the average rabble of Arab armies – shooting at civilians. I saw them watching the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians on the morning of 18 September (the last day of the slaughter) by their vicious Lebanese militia allies. I was present at the Qana massacre by Israeli gunners in 1996 – "Arabushim" (the equivalent of the abusive term "Ayrab" in English), one of the gunners called the 106 dead civilians, more than half of them children, in the Israeli press. Then the Israeli government of Nobel laureate Shimon Peres said there were terrorists among the dead civilians – totally untrue, but who cares? – and then came the second Qana massacre in 2006 and then the 2008-09 Gaza slaughter of 1,300 Palestinians, most of them children, and then...
Well, then came the Goldstone report, which found that Israeli troops (as well as Hamas) committed war crimes in Gaza, but this was condemned as anti-Semitic – poor old honourable Goldstone, himself a prominent Jewish jurist from South Africa, slandered as "an evil man" by the raving Al Dershowitz of Harvard – and was called "controversial" by the brave Obama administration. "Controversial", by the way, basically means "fuck you".
There's doubts about it, you see. It's dodgy stuff.
But back to our chronology. Then we had the Mossad murder of a Hamas official in Dubai with the Israelis using at least 19 forged passports from Britain and other countries. And the pathetic response of our then foreign secretary, David Miliband? He called it "an incident" – not the murder of the guy in Dubai, mind you, just the forgery of UK passports, a highly "controversial" matter – and then... Well, now we've had the shooting down of nine passengers at sea by more Israeli heroes.
The amazing thing in all this is that so many Western journalists – and I'm including the BBC's pusillanimous coverage of the Gaza aid ships – are writing like Israeli journalists, while many Israeli journalists are writing about the killings with the courage that Western journalists should demonstrate. And about the Israeli army itself. Take Amos Harel's devastating report in Haaretz which analyses the make-up of the Israeli army's officer corps. In the past, many of them came from the leftist kibbutzim tradition, from greater Tel Aviv or from the coastal plain of Sharon. In 1990, only 2 per cent of army cadets were religious Orthodox Jews. Today the figure is 30 per cent. Six of the seven lieutenant-colonels in the Golani Brigade are religious. More than 50 per cent of local commanders are "national" religious in some infantry brigades.
There's nothing wrong with being religious. But – although Harel does not make this point quite so strongly – many of the Orthodox are supporters of the colonisation of the West Bank and thus oppose a Palestinian state.
And the Orthodox colonists are the Israelis who most hate the Palestinians, who want to erase the chances of a Palestinian state as surely as some Hamas officials would like to erase Israel. Ironically, it was senior officers of the "old" Israeli army who first encouraged the "terrorist" Hamas to build mosques in Gaza – as a counterbalance to the "terrorist" Yasser Arafat up in Beirut – and I was a witness to one of their meetings. But it will stay the same old story before the world wakes up. "I have never known an army as democratic as Israel's," the hapless French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said a few hours before the slaughter.
Yes, the Israeli army is second to none, elite, humanitarian, heroic. Just don't tell the Somali pirates.
BP's Spill Plan: What they knew and when they knew it
Written by Karen Dalton Beninato | Friday, 04 June 2010
>
NEW ORLEANS | I have obtained a copy of the almost-600-page BP Regional Oil Spill Response Plan for the Gulf of Mexico as of June, 2009, thanks to an insider. Some material has been redacted, but these are the three main takeaways from an initial read. The name of the well has been redacted, but if it's not Deepwater Horizon, then there's another rig still out there pumping oil and aimed at Plaquemines Parish.
For crowdsourcing here's the link, but it's 29 mb so make sure you have the room to download:
1) In the worst case discharge scenario (on chart below), an oil leak was expected to come ashore with highest probability in Plaquemines Parish within 30 days (see map above from the Advance Response Plan). This makes it clear that BP could have stored adequate boom there before a rig failure like the Deepwater Horizon, and workers could have been mobilized to apply the boom in the 30 days that the response plan predicted oil would hit our wetlands.
2) Spokespersons were advised never to assure the public that an ecosystem would be back to normal after the worst case scenario, which we are now living through. "No statements shall be made concerning any of the following: promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal." Even in BP CEO Tony Hayward's new television commercial his assurance is an ambiguous, "We will make this right," which does not specifically address preserving or restoring America's Wetlands.
3) Corexit oil dispersant toxicity has not been tested on ecosystems, according to the Oil Spill Response Plan. "Ecotoxilogical effects: No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product." It is contradictory that the question and answer section discusses the choice of a dispersant with: "Have environmental tradeoffs of dispersant use indicated that use should be considered? Note: This is one of the more difficult questions" and "Has the overflight to assure that endangered species are not in the application area been conducted?" Brown pelicans and sea turtles would have been the answer to the latter.
When it comes to Corexit, it is allowed in the Green Zone, not in the Red Zone without a waiver, and the Yellow Zone is a maybe. Yellow "includes any waters designated as marine reserves, National Marine Sanctuaries, National or State Wildlife Refugees or proposed or designated critical habitats; the waters are within three miles of a shoreline and/or fall under state jurisdiction; the waters are less than ten meters deep; and the waters are in mangrove or coastal wetland ecosystems or directly over coral reefs which are less than ten meters of water. Coastal wetlands include submerged algal and sea grass beds."
President Barack Obama is in Louisiana today, so these findings bear repeating: BP knew in all probability where a Gulf of Mexico oil leak would go; the company knows it is pouring millions of gallons of chemicals untested for ecotoxicity near endangered wetlands; and BP knew it could not assure us that our environment will ever be back to normal. America deserves an immediate, comprehensive response funded by BP and administered by the government to clean, protect and restore our environment because it will be under chemical assault for months.
Even if it's never back to normal, we must make sure that it comes back. If we can't do it for this generation, then we need to make it happen for the next one.
Future of America's Working Class
THE FUTURE OF AMERICA'S WORKING CLASS
by Joel Kotkin 06/01/2010
Watford, England, sits at the end of a spur on the London tube's Metropolitan line, a somewhat dreary city of some 80,000 rising amid the pleasant green Hertfordshire countryside. Although not utterly destitute like parts of south or east London, its shabby High Street reflects a now-diminished British dream of class mobility. It also stands as a potential warning to the U.S., where working-class, blue-collar white Americans have been among the biggest losers in the country's deep, persistent recession.
As you walk through Watford, midday drinkers linger outside the One Bell pub near the center of town. Many of these might be considered "yobs," a term applied to youthful, largely white, working-class youths, many of whom work only occasionally or not at all. In the British press yobs are frequently linked to petty crime and violent behavior--including a recent stabbing outside another Watford pub, and soccer-related hooliganism.
In Britain alcoholism among the disaffected youth has reached epidemic proportions. Britain now suffers among the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the advanced industrial world, and unlike in most countries, boozing is on the upswing.
Some in the media, particularly on the left, decry unflattering descriptions of Britain's young white working class as "demonizing a whole generation." But many others see yobism as the natural product of decades of neglect from the country's three main political parties.
In Britain today white, working-class children now seem to do worse in school than immigrants. A 2003 Home Office study found white men more likely to admit breaking the law than racial minorities; they are also more likely to take dangerous drugs. London School of Economics scholar Dick Hobbs, who grew in a hardscabble section of east London, traces yobism in large part to the decline of blue-collar opportunities throughout Britain. "The social capital that was there went [away]," he suggests. "And so did the power of the labor force. People lost their confidence and never got it back."
Over the past decade, job gains in Britain, like those in the United States, have been concentrated at the top and bottom of the wage profile. The growth in real earnings for blue-collar professions--industry, warehousing and construction--have generally lagged those of white-collar workers.
Tony Blair's "cool Britannia,"epitomized by hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs and media stars, offered little to the working and middle classes. Despite its proletarian roots, New Labour, as London Mayor Boris Johnson acidly notes, has presided over that which has become the most socially immobile society in Europe.
This occurred despite a huge expansion of Britain's welfare state, which now accounts for nearly one-third of government spending. For one thing the expansion of the welfare state apparatus may have done more for high-skilled professionals, who ended up nearly twice as likely to benefit from public employment than the average worker. Nearly one-fifth of young people ages 16 to 24 were out of education, work or training in 1997; after a decade of economic growth that proportion remained the same.
Some people, such as The Times' Camilla Cavendish, even blame the expanding welfare state for helping to create an overlooked generation of "useless, jobless men--the social blight of our age." These males generally do not include immigrants, who by some estimates took more than 70% of the jobs created between 1997 and 2007 in the U.K.
Immigrants, notes Steve Norris, a former member of Parliament from northeastern London and onetime chairman of the Conservative Party, tend to be more economically active than working-class white Britons, who often fear employment might cut into their benefits. "It is mainly U.K. citizens who sit at home watching daytime television complaining about immigrants doing their jobs," asserts Norris, a native of Liverpool.
The results can be seen in places like Watford and throughout large, unfashionable swaths of Essex, south and east London, as well as in perpetually depressed Scotland, the Midlands and north country. Rising housing prices, driven in part by "green" restrictions on new suburban developments, have further depressed the prospects for upward mobility. The gap between the average London house and the ability of a Londoner to afford it now stands among the highest in the advanced world.
Indeed, according to the most recent survey by demographia.com, it takes nearly 7.1 years at the median income to afford a median family home in greater London. Prices in the inner-ring communities often are even higher. According to estimates by the Centre for Social Justice, unaffordability for first-time London home buyers doubled between 1997 and 2007. This has led to a surge in waiting lists for "social housing"; soon there are expected by to be some 2 million households--5 million people--on the waiting list for such housing.
With better-paid jobs disappearing and the prospects for home ownership diminished, the traditional culture of hard work has been replaced increasingly by what Dick Hobbs describes as the "violent potential and instrumental physicality." Urban progress, he notes, has been confused with the apparent vitality of a rollicking night scene: "There are parts of London where the pubs are the only economy."
London, notes the LSE's Tony Travers, is becoming "a First World core surrounded by what seems to be going from a second to a Third World population." This bifurcation appears to be a reversion back to the class conflicts that initially drove so many to traditionally more mobile societies, such as the U.S., Australia and Canada.
Over the past decade, according to a survey by IPSOS Mori, the percentage of people who identify with a particular class has grown from 31% to 38%. Looking into the future, IPSOS Mori concludes, "social class may become more rather than less salient to people's future."
Britain's present situation should represent a warning about America's future as well. Of course there have always been pockets of white poverty in the U.S., particularly in places like Appalachia, but generally the country has been shaped by a belief in class mobility.
But the current recession, and the lack of effective political response addressing the working class' needs, threatens to reverse this trend.
More recently middle- and working-class family incomes, stagnant since the 1970s, have been further depressed by a downturn that has been particularly brutal to the warehousing, construction and manufacturing economies. White unemployment has now edged to 9%, higher among those with less than a college education. And poverty is actually rising among whites more rapidly than among blacks, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
You can see the repeat here of some of the factors paralleling the development of British yobism: longer-term unemployment; the growing threat of meth labs in hard-hit cities and small towns; and, most particularly, a 20% unemployment rate for workers under age 25. Amazingly barely one in three white teenagers, according to a recent Hamilton College poll, thinks his standard of living will be better than his parents'.
It's no surprise then that Democrats are losing support among working-class whites, much like the now-destitute British Labour Party. But the potential yobization of the American working class represents far more than a political issue. It threatens the very essence of what has made the U.S. unique and different from its mother country.
by Joel Kotkin 06/01/2010
Watford, England, sits at the end of a spur on the London tube's Metropolitan line, a somewhat dreary city of some 80,000 rising amid the pleasant green Hertfordshire countryside. Although not utterly destitute like parts of south or east London, its shabby High Street reflects a now-diminished British dream of class mobility. It also stands as a potential warning to the U.S., where working-class, blue-collar white Americans have been among the biggest losers in the country's deep, persistent recession.
As you walk through Watford, midday drinkers linger outside the One Bell pub near the center of town. Many of these might be considered "yobs," a term applied to youthful, largely white, working-class youths, many of whom work only occasionally or not at all. In the British press yobs are frequently linked to petty crime and violent behavior--including a recent stabbing outside another Watford pub, and soccer-related hooliganism.
In Britain alcoholism among the disaffected youth has reached epidemic proportions. Britain now suffers among the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the advanced industrial world, and unlike in most countries, boozing is on the upswing.
Some in the media, particularly on the left, decry unflattering descriptions of Britain's young white working class as "demonizing a whole generation." But many others see yobism as the natural product of decades of neglect from the country's three main political parties.
In Britain today white, working-class children now seem to do worse in school than immigrants. A 2003 Home Office study found white men more likely to admit breaking the law than racial minorities; they are also more likely to take dangerous drugs. London School of Economics scholar Dick Hobbs, who grew in a hardscabble section of east London, traces yobism in large part to the decline of blue-collar opportunities throughout Britain. "The social capital that was there went [away]," he suggests. "And so did the power of the labor force. People lost their confidence and never got it back."
Over the past decade, job gains in Britain, like those in the United States, have been concentrated at the top and bottom of the wage profile. The growth in real earnings for blue-collar professions--industry, warehousing and construction--have generally lagged those of white-collar workers.
Tony Blair's "cool Britannia,"epitomized by hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs and media stars, offered little to the working and middle classes. Despite its proletarian roots, New Labour, as London Mayor Boris Johnson acidly notes, has presided over that which has become the most socially immobile society in Europe.
This occurred despite a huge expansion of Britain's welfare state, which now accounts for nearly one-third of government spending. For one thing the expansion of the welfare state apparatus may have done more for high-skilled professionals, who ended up nearly twice as likely to benefit from public employment than the average worker. Nearly one-fifth of young people ages 16 to 24 were out of education, work or training in 1997; after a decade of economic growth that proportion remained the same.
Some people, such as The Times' Camilla Cavendish, even blame the expanding welfare state for helping to create an overlooked generation of "useless, jobless men--the social blight of our age." These males generally do not include immigrants, who by some estimates took more than 70% of the jobs created between 1997 and 2007 in the U.K.
Immigrants, notes Steve Norris, a former member of Parliament from northeastern London and onetime chairman of the Conservative Party, tend to be more economically active than working-class white Britons, who often fear employment might cut into their benefits. "It is mainly U.K. citizens who sit at home watching daytime television complaining about immigrants doing their jobs," asserts Norris, a native of Liverpool.
The results can be seen in places like Watford and throughout large, unfashionable swaths of Essex, south and east London, as well as in perpetually depressed Scotland, the Midlands and north country. Rising housing prices, driven in part by "green" restrictions on new suburban developments, have further depressed the prospects for upward mobility. The gap between the average London house and the ability of a Londoner to afford it now stands among the highest in the advanced world.
Indeed, according to the most recent survey by demographia.com, it takes nearly 7.1 years at the median income to afford a median family home in greater London. Prices in the inner-ring communities often are even higher. According to estimates by the Centre for Social Justice, unaffordability for first-time London home buyers doubled between 1997 and 2007. This has led to a surge in waiting lists for "social housing"; soon there are expected by to be some 2 million households--5 million people--on the waiting list for such housing.
With better-paid jobs disappearing and the prospects for home ownership diminished, the traditional culture of hard work has been replaced increasingly by what Dick Hobbs describes as the "violent potential and instrumental physicality." Urban progress, he notes, has been confused with the apparent vitality of a rollicking night scene: "There are parts of London where the pubs are the only economy."
London, notes the LSE's Tony Travers, is becoming "a First World core surrounded by what seems to be going from a second to a Third World population." This bifurcation appears to be a reversion back to the class conflicts that initially drove so many to traditionally more mobile societies, such as the U.S., Australia and Canada.
Over the past decade, according to a survey by IPSOS Mori, the percentage of people who identify with a particular class has grown from 31% to 38%. Looking into the future, IPSOS Mori concludes, "social class may become more rather than less salient to people's future."
Britain's present situation should represent a warning about America's future as well. Of course there have always been pockets of white poverty in the U.S., particularly in places like Appalachia, but generally the country has been shaped by a belief in class mobility.
But the current recession, and the lack of effective political response addressing the working class' needs, threatens to reverse this trend.
More recently middle- and working-class family incomes, stagnant since the 1970s, have been further depressed by a downturn that has been particularly brutal to the warehousing, construction and manufacturing economies. White unemployment has now edged to 9%, higher among those with less than a college education. And poverty is actually rising among whites more rapidly than among blacks, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
You can see the repeat here of some of the factors paralleling the development of British yobism: longer-term unemployment; the growing threat of meth labs in hard-hit cities and small towns; and, most particularly, a 20% unemployment rate for workers under age 25. Amazingly barely one in three white teenagers, according to a recent Hamilton College poll, thinks his standard of living will be better than his parents'.
It's no surprise then that Democrats are losing support among working-class whites, much like the now-destitute British Labour Party. But the potential yobization of the American working class represents far more than a political issue. It threatens the very essence of what has made the U.S. unique and different from its mother country.
The Psychology of Darth Vader Revealed
By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 04 June 2010
Anakin Skywalker's eventual transformation into Darth Vader might have more to do with psychological issues than the Force, researchers hint.
The tragic hero of the "Star Wars" prequels displays patterns of instability and impulsivity in the second and third films that make him an obvious candidate for borderline personality disorder (BPD), according to French psychiatrists and psychologists.
The researchers also suspect the traits exhibited by Skywalker might make him more appealing and relatable to teen fans, given that teens may also display certain characteristics of borderline personality disorder.
"I had watched the two prequel movies ["Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith"], and it was during my residency in psychiatry while trying to explain borderline personality disorder to medical students that I thought of Anakin," said Eric Bui, a psychiatrist at Toulouse University Hospital in France.
Bui and his colleagues first presented their diagnosis at the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association in 2007. Now, their letter to the editor titled "Is Anakin Skywalker suffering from borderline personality disorder?" is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychiatry Research.
Skywalker hit six out of the nine borderline personality disorder criteria as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV). He only needed to meet five criteria to qualify as suffering from the disorder.
A great disturbance in the Force
For instance, the future Darth Vader showed both impulsivity and anger management issues as an overexcited, lovelorn Jedi. He went back and forth between idealizing and devaluing Jedi mentors, such as a humorless young Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Abandonment issues also surfaced. Skywalker had a permanent fear of losing his wife, Padme Amidala, and he went so far as to betray his Jedi mentors and companions to try to prevent her death.
Two displays of dissociative episodes took place when Skywalker tried to distance himself from stressful events. The first episode took place after he slaughtered a local tribe of Tuskens responsible for his mother's death. A second episode occurred following his murderous rampage among young Jedi trainees, as he voiced paranoid thoughts about Obi-Wan Kenobi and his wife.
Lastly, any "Star Wars" fan would recognize Skywalker's identity issues and uncertainty about who he was. His fateful turn to the dark side and change of name to Darth Vader could represent the ultimate sign of such identity disturbance, the researchers said.
The future Darth Vader would also still qualify as a "borderline type" under the revised guidelines of the DSM-V, which will serve as the new bible for psychiatry.
"From what we know of the future DSM-V, Anakin is a "good" to "very good" match to the future BPD," Bui told LiveScience.
Searching for balance
Skywalker's case of borderline personality disorder has proven useful for both Bui and Rachel Rodgers, a researcher at the Center for Studies and Research in Applied Psychology in France. They have used the "Star Wars" example to teach their students for the past few years, and noted that such a famous fictional example could spread awareness.
The researchers also suggested that the success of the "Star Wars" prequel films might partially rely upon how teens can relate to the troubled Anakin Skywalker. Only adults can be diagnosed with to borderline personality disorder under the current DSM-IV guidelines, but Bui and Rodgers pointed to several studies that suggest the disorder is fairly frequent among teens.
Either way, the situation in the "Star Wars" prequels seems clear to Bui. He pointed out that the emperor's dark and destabilizing influence upon a young Skywalker might have even exacerbated the symptoms of borderline personality disorder.
But like any good doctor, Bui also has a treatment recommendation.
"I believe that psychotherapy would have helped Anakin and might have prevented him from turning to the dark side," Bui said. "Using the dark side of the Force could be considered as similar to drug use: It feels really good when you use it, it alters your consciousness and you know you shouldn’t do it."
posted: 04 June 2010
Anakin Skywalker's eventual transformation into Darth Vader might have more to do with psychological issues than the Force, researchers hint.
The tragic hero of the "Star Wars" prequels displays patterns of instability and impulsivity in the second and third films that make him an obvious candidate for borderline personality disorder (BPD), according to French psychiatrists and psychologists.
The researchers also suspect the traits exhibited by Skywalker might make him more appealing and relatable to teen fans, given that teens may also display certain characteristics of borderline personality disorder.
"I had watched the two prequel movies ["Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith"], and it was during my residency in psychiatry while trying to explain borderline personality disorder to medical students that I thought of Anakin," said Eric Bui, a psychiatrist at Toulouse University Hospital in France.
Bui and his colleagues first presented their diagnosis at the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association in 2007. Now, their letter to the editor titled "Is Anakin Skywalker suffering from borderline personality disorder?" is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychiatry Research.
Skywalker hit six out of the nine borderline personality disorder criteria as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV). He only needed to meet five criteria to qualify as suffering from the disorder.
A great disturbance in the Force
For instance, the future Darth Vader showed both impulsivity and anger management issues as an overexcited, lovelorn Jedi. He went back and forth between idealizing and devaluing Jedi mentors, such as a humorless young Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Abandonment issues also surfaced. Skywalker had a permanent fear of losing his wife, Padme Amidala, and he went so far as to betray his Jedi mentors and companions to try to prevent her death.
Two displays of dissociative episodes took place when Skywalker tried to distance himself from stressful events. The first episode took place after he slaughtered a local tribe of Tuskens responsible for his mother's death. A second episode occurred following his murderous rampage among young Jedi trainees, as he voiced paranoid thoughts about Obi-Wan Kenobi and his wife.
Lastly, any "Star Wars" fan would recognize Skywalker's identity issues and uncertainty about who he was. His fateful turn to the dark side and change of name to Darth Vader could represent the ultimate sign of such identity disturbance, the researchers said.
The future Darth Vader would also still qualify as a "borderline type" under the revised guidelines of the DSM-V, which will serve as the new bible for psychiatry.
"From what we know of the future DSM-V, Anakin is a "good" to "very good" match to the future BPD," Bui told LiveScience.
Searching for balance
Skywalker's case of borderline personality disorder has proven useful for both Bui and Rachel Rodgers, a researcher at the Center for Studies and Research in Applied Psychology in France. They have used the "Star Wars" example to teach their students for the past few years, and noted that such a famous fictional example could spread awareness.
The researchers also suggested that the success of the "Star Wars" prequel films might partially rely upon how teens can relate to the troubled Anakin Skywalker. Only adults can be diagnosed with to borderline personality disorder under the current DSM-IV guidelines, but Bui and Rodgers pointed to several studies that suggest the disorder is fairly frequent among teens.
Either way, the situation in the "Star Wars" prequels seems clear to Bui. He pointed out that the emperor's dark and destabilizing influence upon a young Skywalker might have even exacerbated the symptoms of borderline personality disorder.
But like any good doctor, Bui also has a treatment recommendation.
"I believe that psychotherapy would have helped Anakin and might have prevented him from turning to the dark side," Bui said. "Using the dark side of the Force could be considered as similar to drug use: It feels really good when you use it, it alters your consciousness and you know you shouldn’t do it."
Dallas Fed's Fisher Rages Against Too Big To Fail...
...Says Only Way To Remove Systemic Risk Is Shrinking The Megabanks
by Tyler Durden on 06/03/2010
by Tyler Durden on 06/03/2010
In a speech before the SW Graduate School of Banking, Dallas Fed's Richard Fisher comes out swinging, blasting his boss Ben Bernanke and his policy of globalized moral hazard: "Let me make my sentiments clear: It is my view that, by propping up deeply troubled big banks, authorities have eroded market discipline in the financial system. It is not difficult to see where this dynamic leads—to more pronounced financial cycles and repeated crises." And just in case listeners missed the point, he followed up: "Just this morning, the Washington Post summarized the impasse that inevitably blocks treatment of the TBTF pathology. In an article on preparation for this weekend’s Group of 20 talks on bank reform, it was noted that “some” participants “remain hesitant to lean too hard on banks they consider vital to their national economies.” This hesitancy only perpetuates the problem: The longer authorities delay the process, the more engrained behemoth financial institutions become; the more engrained they become, the less extricable they are. And so the debilitating disease of TBTF spreads. What appears “vital” becomes “viral” and grows ever more threatening to financial stability and economic stability."
Fischer implicitly supports Ted Kaufman's proposal, which failed in the corrupt and Chris Dodd subservient Senate, that had proposed a very sensible size limitation on banks:
Some counter that even if all banks were made small or mid-size (or at least not TBTF), systemic threats—and thus the incentive for regulators to step in and save financial institutions—would not disappear. For instance, if a lot of small banks got into trouble simultaneously—or, as I like to say, forgot they had already been to the Ocean View Restaurant before and made the same bad bets at the same time—one might expect the central bank and regulators to protect bank creditors, extending TBTF protections once again. As the argument goes, breaking up big banks may be necessary but is possibly not sufficient—policymakers still must grapple with the possibility of many smaller banks getting into trouble at the same time, causing a “systemic” problem.
I consider this argument hollow for a few reasons.
First, even if this possibility turned out to be true, the threat of a loss from more isolated difficulties would mean creditors could reasonably expect losses in certain circumstances—a situation unlike TBTF.
Second, going by what we see today, there is considerable diversity in strategy and performance among banks that are not TBTF. Looking at commercial banks with assets under $10 billion, over 200 failed in the past few years, and as we have seen, failures in the hundreds make the news. Less appreciated, though, is the fact that while 200 banks failed, some 7,000 community banks did not. Banks that are not TBTF appear to have succumbed less to the herd-like mentality that brought their larger peers to their knees.
We saw similar diversity during the Texas banking crisis of the late 1980s. Small banks had diverse risk exposures. The most aggressive ones failed, while the more conservative did not.[11]
Some have also pointed to the Great Depression as a period when many small banks got into trouble at the same time. That situation seems less relevant to the policy questions we face today. Those failures were the result of a liquidity crisis that brought down both nonviable and viable banks. Such a liquidity crisis among small banks would be unlikely today, as we now have federal deposit insurance, which protects deposits for funding. And, I might add, the Federal Reserve has demonstrated quite effectively over the past two years that we not only have the capacity to deal with liquidity disruptions but also the ability to unwind emergency liquidity facilities when they are no longer needed.
The point is this: The arguments against shrinking the largest financial institutions are found wanting. And sufficient or not, ending the existence of TBTF institutions is certainly a necessary part of any regulatory reform effort that could succeed in creating a stable financial system. It is the most sound response of all. The dangers posed by institutions deemed TBTF far exceed any purported benefits. Their existence creates incentives that will eventually undermine financial stability. If we are to neutralize the problem, we must force these institutions to reduce their size.
I do not want to be naïve here. I am not suggesting that our banking system devolve into institutions like the Bailey Building and Loan Association in It’s a Wonderful Life. Large institutions have their virtues. They can offer an array of financial products and services that George Bailey could not. A globalized, interconnected marketplace needs large financial institutions. What it does not need, in my view, are a few gargantuan institutions capable of bringing down the very system they claim to serve.
Unfortunately, in preserving the dictatorial nature of the Federal Reserve system, Ben Bernanke will neither listen to Hoenig, who earlier said a rate hike to 1% by the end of the summer is critial, nor to Fisher, whose suggestion will destroy any hope of Bernanke's true employers can ever have of reaping the kinds of bonuses they are used to, and hope to extract from the middle class at least one more time before the ponzi house of cards collapses once and for all.
Richard W. Fisher
Financial Reform or Financial Dementia?
Remarks at the SW Graduate School of Banking 53rd Annual Keynote Address and Banquet
Dallas, Texas
June 3, 2010
Remarks at the SW Graduate School of Banking 53rd Annual Keynote Address and Banquet
Dallas, Texas
June 3, 2010
I understand from Scott MacDonald that tonight is the 53rd annual keynote address and banquet of the SW Graduate School of Banking—an impressive anniversary, which reminds me of a story.
A couple is deciding where to dine on their 10th wedding anniversary. They settle on the Ocean View Restaurant because that is where the beautiful, hard-bodied people go. On their 20th anniversary, they discuss where to celebrate, and they agree again on the Ocean View because the wines and the food are superb. For their 30th, they return to the Ocean View once more, having agreed that, as they sit there in silence, the view from the terrace is second to none. On their 40th anniversary, they agree that the Ocean View is just right because it has wheelchair access and an elevator to get them to the porch overlooking the ocean. On their 50th, they want to do something truly special to celebrate. So they decide to go to the Ocean View … because they have never been there before.
Most of you are bankers—many, graduates or future graduates of this fine school. My message to you tonight is to remember where we have been. We have collectively been to hell and back. Let’s not go there again. Let’s remember that bankers should never succumb to what is trendy or fashionable or convenient but should instead focus on what is sustainable and in the interest of providing for the long-term good of their customers.
You gather tonight on the eve of a conference of key members of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States seeking to agree upon legislation to foster financial reform.[1] This evening, I am going to discuss this reform initiative. I do so, as always, speaking my own mind, making clear that I speak for nobody else at the Fed (something that is usually patently clear). I do so as one of only a few members of the Federal Open Market Committee who have been practicing commercial bankers. And I do so in the belief that it is always best to speak the truth to political convention.
In their unicameral sessions, the House and Senate have cleared away a lot of the underbrush of who does what to whom. As it now stands—due in significant part to the efforts of Sen. Hutchison of Texas and her colleague Sen. Klobuchar of Minnesota—my colleagues and I at the Federal Reserve will have responsibility for regulating, in some fashion, banking organizations across the spectrum, from community and regional banks to money center banks to thrift holding companies. I believe we are best suited for such responsibility. We have been battle hardened by the crises of both the 1980s here in Texas and this most recent episode, which threatened to bring the system of market capitalism to the brink. Yet, at the same time, I have some concerns about our ability to deal with the most vexing of the issues presented by the recent crisis: the issue of institutions that are considered “too big to fail” (or, if you prefer the acronym that has become commonplace, TBTF).
The Not-So-Shadow System
It has become popular to blame recent financial problems on the so-called shadow banking system. This, however, is an obfuscation. The heavily advertised distinction between commercial banks and the shadow banking system is, in many ways, false.
It has become popular to blame recent financial problems on the so-called shadow banking system. This, however, is an obfuscation. The heavily advertised distinction between commercial banks and the shadow banking system is, in many ways, false.
Take, for example, one of the most well-known and problematic phenomena of the shadow banking world: structured investment vehicles, or SIVs. Despite repeated claims to the contrary, SIVs were not distinct from commercial banks. Many SIVs actually originated from the very core of the commercial banking system—dominated in size by the largest banks—where bank regulation was presumably the strongest. Make no mistake: Big banks created SIVs. They supported SIVs with credit and liquidity enhancements. They marketed and invested in SIVs. And once the crisis hit, big banks were forced to bring SIVs onto their balance sheets. In this way, the presumed distinction between the commercial banking system and the so-called shadow banking system is false.
It is also a widely held misperception that SIVs escaped regulatory treatment. Regulators knew about them and even applied capital requirements to them. Unfortunately, those regulatory requirements were woefully inadequate. The favorable regulatory treatment granted to many of these vehicles was, in many cases, what accounted for their existence. The vehicles were created not so much for an economic purpose, but rather to minimize regulatory capital requirements.
SIVs and other programs sponsored by big banks were also exposed to runs. In contrast to other members of the shadow banking system—like hedge funds—SIVs had inadequate mechanisms in place to protect their liquidity.
I do not wish to single out SIVs. They are just one example of the excess to which large institutions succumbed. We are well aware of the alphabet soup of acronyms, including CDOs and CLOs, that contributed to the crisis, along with an excessive degree of faith in the ability of complex statistical models to mathematize risk taking.
Dealing with TBTF
Of course, recent financial problems have not been limited to large institutions and their opaque operations. As you in this room know all too well, regional and community institutions have faced their own difficulties, especially in the context of construction lending. Smaller banks that have realized debilitating losses have failed. When they got into deep trouble, regulators took them over and resolved them.
Of course, recent financial problems have not been limited to large institutions and their opaque operations. As you in this room know all too well, regional and community institutions have faced their own difficulties, especially in the context of construction lending. Smaller banks that have realized debilitating losses have failed. When they got into deep trouble, regulators took them over and resolved them.
We might have expected a similar treatment of big banks. But we would have been wrong. Regulators have, for the most part, tiptoed around these larger institutions. Despite the damage they did, failing big banks were allowed to lumber on, with government support. It should come as no surprise that the industry is unfortunately evolving toward larger and larger bank size with financial resources concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Based on these considerations, coupled with studies suggesting severe limits to economies of scale in banking, it seems that mostly as a result of public policy—and not the competitive marketplace—ever larger banks have come to dominate the financial landscape. And, absent fundamental reform, they will continue to do so. As a result of public policy, big banks have become indestructible. And as a result of public policy, the industrial organization of banking is slanted toward bigness.
Big banks that took on high risks and generated unsustainable losses received a public benefit: TBTF support. As a result, more conservative banks were denied the market share that would have been theirs if mismanaged big banks had been allowed to go out of business. In essence, conservative banks faced publicly backed competition.
Let me make my sentiments clear: It is my view that, by propping up deeply troubled big banks, authorities have eroded market discipline in the financial system.
The system has become slanted not only toward bigness but also high risk. Consider regulators’ efforts to impose capital requirements on big banks. Clearly, if the central bank and regulators view any losses to big bank creditors as systemically disruptive, big bank debt will effectively reign on high in the capital structure. Big banks would love leverage even more, making regulatory attempts to mandate lower leverage in boom times all the more difficult. In this manner, high risk taking by big banks has been rewarded, and conservatism at smaller institutions has been penalized. Indeed, large banks have been so bold as to claim that the complex constructs used to avoid capital requirements are just an example of the free market’s invisible hand at work. Left unmentioned is the fact that the banking market is not at all free when big banks are not free to fail.
It is not difficult to see where this dynamic leads—to more pronounced financial cycles and repeated crises.
This is the threat that legislators are now attempting to address in the financial reform bill. A widely noted feature of this legislative effort is the fairly broad scope for regulatory discretion.
For instance, under the proposed legislation
, systemically important companies are required to submit a “living will.” According to the legislation, these firms are “to report periodically to the [Fed’s] Board of Governors, the [Financial Stability Oversight] Council, and the [FDIC] the plan of such company for rapid and orderly resolution in the event of material financial distress or failure.”[2]
, systemically important companies are required to submit a “living will.” According to the legislation, these firms are “to report periodically to the [Fed’s] Board of Governors, the [Financial Stability Oversight] Council, and the [FDIC] the plan of such company for rapid and orderly resolution in the event of material financial distress or failure.”[2]If the Board and FDIC find the plan deficient, the bill calls for the company to resubmit an alternative approach within a set time frame. Failure to resubmit the resolution plan could result in the imposition of more stringent capital, leverage or liquidity requirements or restrictions on growth and activities. Furthermore, the Board and FDIC, in consultation with the council, may direct the firm “to divest certain assets or operations identified by the Board of Governors and the [FDIC], to facilitate an orderly resolution.”[3]
The legislation also requires that a Credit Exposure Report be submitted “periodically” on “the nature and extent to which the company has credit exposure to other significant nonbank financial companies and significant bank holding companies; and … the nature and extent to which other significant nonbank financial companies and significant bank holding companies have credit exposure to that company.”[4]
The new Financial Stability Oversight Council is directed to “make recommendations to the [Fed’s] Board of Governors concerning the establishment of heightened prudential standards for risk-based capital, leverage, liquidity, contingent capital, resolution plans and credit exposure reports, concentration limits, enhanced public disclosures, and overall risk management” for systemically important institutions.[5]
The name of the game, here, is regulatory discretion.
There are—as there always are—criticisms. Some feel, for instance, that while regulators are being given more authority, they are also being given ambiguous, if not conflicting, directives that would leave the specter of TBTF lurking in the background. For instance, the bill states that it seeks “to provide the necessary authority to liquidate failing financial companies that pose a significant risk to the financial stability of the United States in a manner that mitigates such risk and minimizes moral hazard.”[6] It also directs the FDIC to “ensure that the shareholders of a covered financial company do not receive payment until after all other claims … are fully paid.”[7] However, the bill goes on to state that in the disposition of assets, the FDIC shall “to the greatest extent practicable, conduct its operations in a manner that … mitigates the potential for serious adverse effects to the financial system.”[8]
Language that includes a desire to minimize moral hazard—and directs the FDIC as receiver to consider “the potential for serious adverse effects”—provides wiggle room to perpetuate TBTF.
Criticisms aside, this is the path our legislative powers have laid out for dealing with the issue of TBTF. Regulators must now decide exactly how they will travel down that path.
There appear to be three major ways to navigate proposed policy making toward big banks: (1) the regulate ’em camp, (2) the resolve ’em camp and (3) the shrink ’em camp.
Let’s examine these one by one.
Regulate ’Em
First, we have the “regulate ’em” camp. While it is certainly true that ineffective regulation of systemically important institutions—like big commercial banking companies—contributed to the crisis, I find it highly unlikely that such institutions can be effectively regulated, even after reform.
First, we have the “regulate ’em” camp. While it is certainly true that ineffective regulation of systemically important institutions—like big commercial banking companies—contributed to the crisis, I find it highly unlikely that such institutions can be effectively regulated, even after reform.
To be blunt: Simple regulatory changes in most cases represent a too-late attempt to catch up with the tricks of the regulated—the trickiest of whom tend to be large. In the U.S. financial system, what passed as “innovation” was in large part circumvention, as financial engineers invented ways to get around the rules of the road. There is little evidence that new regulations, involving capital and liquidity rules, could ever contain the circumvention instinct.
- In 1864, the National Bank Act set minimum capital requirements, but these attempts at quantifying capital adequacy were unsuccessful. Over the years, such efforts continued at both the state and federal level, but without much success.
- By the 1950s, it was concluded that static capital requirements could only interfere with the more comprehensive analyses required to obtain a complete picture of a bank’s ability to absorb losses.
- In 1981, the federal banking agencies responded to diminishing bank capital positions by introducing numerical capital requirements, as the judgment-based approach to capital regulation had proven insufficient. But before long, authorities felt the need to revise these new numerical requirements, as they failed to differentiate between banks according to risk and invited capital arbitrage.
- In 1988, the central banks of the G-10 adopted risk-based capital requirements, as embodied in the Basel Accord. It did not take long before the need for change was felt once again as the original accord proved a blunt instrument that did not differentiate properly among various risk types and allowed significant avenues for capital arbitrage, particularly through loan securitization.
- In response, authorities began crafting Basel II. However, before it could be fully implemented, the risks taken through loan securitization blew up, producing the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression.
- And as we know all too well, even if Basel II had gone into full effect, it would not have contained risk effectively nor created a sufficient buffer against losses.
- Thus, policymakers have been busily constructing what may be thought of as Basel III.
Regulatory reform discussions portray the need to control systemic risk as a new game in town—as if it were a new responsibility that need only be assigned. This is not the case: Bank regulators have long viewed the containment of systemic risk as a primary rationale for capital requirements. The problem is that capital regulation has rarely been truly successful.
Requiring additional capital against risk sounds like a good idea but is difficult to implement. What should count as capital? How does one measure risk before an accident occurs? And how does one counteract the strong impulse of the regulated to minimize required capital in highly complex ways? History has shown these issues to be quite difficult. While we do not have many examples of effective regulation of large, complex banks operating in competitive markets, we have numerous examples of regulatory failure with large, complex banks.
So, you might say I am a skeptic of regulation alone.
Resolve ’Em
In my opinionated view, a traditional regulatory response—while well-intentioned—cannot, by itself, fully address the threat of TBTF. So we turn to the “resolve ’em” camp.
In my opinionated view, a traditional regulatory response—while well-intentioned—cannot, by itself, fully address the threat of TBTF. So we turn to the “resolve ’em” camp.
The argument goes something like this: If deeply troubled large banks are allowed to fail, the banking industry could evolve toward a market-driven structure. During the recent crisis, regulators lamented the lack of a formal resolution process for large and complex financial organizations, claiming it reduced their options and tied their hands. So it follows that a resolution regime whereby regulators can economically resolve failed big banks might be the ticket. In this case, there will be no more TBTF.
Unfortunately, imposing creditor losses at a failing big bank, while simultaneously avoiding market disruptions, involves more than a bit of sophistry. Realistically, it would be difficult to accomplish both at the same time. Based on experience, one of these goals will take precedence over the other. And history shows which goal typically wins.
The sad truth is that when the chips are down, regulators become reluctant to put their money where their mouths are—or more precisely, they become too eager to put their money where they said they would not. Few, if any, policymakers have been willing to let large banking organizations fail, thereby missing an opportunity to impose significant losses on failed institutions’ creditors. We know from intuition and experience that any financial institution deemed TBTF will not be allowed to fail in the traditional sense. When such an institution becomes troubled, its creditors are protected in the name of market stability. The TBTF problem is exacerbated if the central bank and regulators view wiping out big bank shareholders as too disruptive, extending this measure of protection to ordinary equity holders.
In the recent crisis, authorities protected both—uninsured creditors and shareholders of big banks. While uninsured creditors received the greatest protection, regulators even partnered with existing shareholders through the injection of public funds. This program eventually spread to banks of all sizes, but its initial focus was the very largest banks. True, many large-bank shareholders sustained severe losses—but they were not zeroed out. They and their institutions have lived to see another day.
Why should we think the future could, realistically, be any different—especially with even bigger banks that dominate the financial landscape today?
A credible big-bank resolution process that imposes creditor losses will be difficult to enforce, especially when regulators are explicitly directed to mitigate disruptions to the financial system, as they are in the proposed reform bill. And there remain the technical problems of resolution, such as the difficulty of quickly estimating a rate of recovery on a large and complex banking organization and paying it out to creditors. Countless issues like this remain unaddressed. For instance, how would a resolution regime market assets of a failed big bank? Major business lines presumably would be kept intact to preserve value and maximize recovery. But if one large organization were simply sold to another, the industry could become more concentrated than before. That is exactly what happened during the crisis as large failing firms were sold to other large firms.
All of this ignores a still-greater problem: Even if an effective resolution regime can be written down, chances are it might not be used. There are myriad ways for regulators to forbear. Accounting forbearance, for example, could artificially boost regulatory capital levels at troubled big banks. Special liquidity facilities could provide funding relief. In this and similar manners, crisis-related events that might trigger the need for resolution could be avoided, making resolution a moot issue. TBTF would continue, in any case.
Consider the idea of limiting any and all financial support strictly to the system as a whole, thus preventing any one firm from receiving individual assistance. Many have argued such a restriction would minimize the possibility of bank bailouts. Even under this restriction, however, support for large institutions at the expense of smaller peers could live on. If authorities wanted to support a big bank in trouble, they would need only institute a systemwide program. Big banks could then avail themselves of the program, even if nobody else needed it. Systemwide programs are unfortunately a perfect back door through which to channel big bank bailouts.
Or consider the so-called living wills introduced in the financial reform bill. These presumably might serve as a type of instruction manual or roadmap for resolving a large failed bank. But, quite unfortunately, large banking companies have organized themselves in ways that entail significant spillovers to other financial firms and the economy, thereby making a bailout, in many cases, the only credible choice for policymakers. Legislators have attempted to work around this pitfall, requiring changes to large banking companies whose wills are found wanting—prior to a crisis. This could, if used properly, reduce to tolerable levels the spillovers that would result from the imposition of creditor losses. Regardless, even after requested changes have been made, if these wills are still lacking, the associated firms will be TBTF.
Again, in my view, enhanced resolution regimes, by themselves, are not enough to end TBTF. Even a combination of enhanced regulation and resolution would likely be inadequate. The temptation to use regulatory discretion to avoid disruptions is just too great.
Shrink ’Em
This leaves us with only one way to get serious about TBTF—the “shrink ’em” camp. Banks that are TBTF are simply TB—“too big.” We must cap their size or break them up—in one way or another shrink them relative to the size of the industry.
This leaves us with only one way to get serious about TBTF—the “shrink ’em” camp. Banks that are TBTF are simply TB—“too big.” We must cap their size or break them up—in one way or another shrink them relative to the size of the industry.
In its latest version, the financial regulatory reform bill has left regulators (specifically, the Board of Governors and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) with the authority to impose greater restrictions on firms whose living wills are not credible. That authority, as I mentioned previously, could include “[divesting] certain assets or operations … to facilitate an orderly resolution.”[10] I would argue that regulators should freely use this broad authority to commit credibly to resolution with creditor losses by reducing big banks’ size and interconnectedness.
(You can see why my stance on TBTF hardly endears me to audiences on Wall Street. I am given to quoting Winston Churchill in response. He said that “in finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable.” It is most disagreeable to the big bank, big money lobby to countenance restrictions on size, and hence it is the perceived wisdom that this approach is disagreeable. And yet it is perhaps the most sound approach of all those proffered.)
Some counter that even if all banks were made small or mid-size (or at least not TBTF), systemic threats—and thus the incentive for regulators to step in and save financial institutions—would not disappear. For instance, if a lot of small banks got into trouble simultaneously—or, as I like to say, forgot they had already been to the Ocean View Restaurant before and made the same bad bets at the same time—one might expect the central bank and regulators to protect bank creditors, extending TBTF protections once again. As the argument goes, breaking up big banks may be necessary but is possibly not sufficient—policymakers still must grapple with the possibility of many smaller banks getting into trouble at the same time, causing a “systemic” problem.
I consider this argument hollow for a few reasons.
First, even if this possibility turned out to be true, the threat of a loss from more isolated difficulties would mean creditors could reasonably expect losses in certain circumstances—a situation unlike TBTF.
Second, going by what we see today, there is considerable diversity in strategy and performance among banks that are not TBTF. Looking at commercial banks with assets under $10 billion, over 200 failed in the past few years, and as we have seen, failures in the hundreds make the news. Less appreciated, though, is the fact that while 200 banks failed, some 7,000 community banks did not. Banks that are not TBTF appear to have succumbed less to the herd-like mentality that brought their larger peers to their knees.
We saw similar diversity during the Texas banking crisis of the late 1980s. Small banks had diverse risk exposures. The most aggressive ones failed, while the more conservative did not.[11]
Some have also pointed to the Great Depression as a period when many small banks got into trouble at the same time. That situation seems less relevant to the policy questions we face today. Those failures were the result of a liquidity crisis that brought down both nonviable and viable banks. Such a liquidity crisis among small banks would be unlikely today, as we now have federal deposit insurance, which protects deposits for funding. And, I might add, the Federal Reserve has demonstrated quite effectively over the past two years that we not only have the capacity to deal with liquidity disruptions but also the ability to unwind emergency liquidity facilities when they are no longer needed.
The point is this: The arguments against shrinking the largest financial institutions are found wanting. And sufficient or not, ending the existence of TBTF institutions is certainly a necessary part of any regulatory reform effort that could succeed in creating a stable financial system. It is the most sound response of all. The dangers posed by institutions deemed TBTF far exceed any purported benefits. Their existence creates incentives that will eventually undermine financial stability. If we are to neutralize the problem, we must force these institutions to reduce their size.
I do not want to be naïve here. I am not suggesting that our banking system devolve into institutions like the Bailey Building and Loan Association in It’s a Wonderful Life. Large institutions have their virtues. They can offer an array of financial products and services that George Bailey could not. A globalized, interconnected marketplace needs large financial institutions. What it does not need, in my view, are a few gargantuan institutions capable of bringing down the very system they claim to serve.
Europe and TBTF
Of course, we are not the only ones dealing with the monstrous challenges of TBTF. Our friends across the Pond are also focused on the risks posed by institutions that have grown dangerously large (called “systemically important financial institutions,” or SIFIs). Despite Europe’s longstanding accommodation of, and preference for, large banking organizations in the universal banking model, the European Central Bank has become fairly forthright about the problem.
Of course, we are not the only ones dealing with the monstrous challenges of TBTF. Our friends across the Pond are also focused on the risks posed by institutions that have grown dangerously large (called “systemically important financial institutions,” or SIFIs). Despite Europe’s longstanding accommodation of, and preference for, large banking organizations in the universal banking model, the European Central Bank has become fairly forthright about the problem.
Unfortunately, in attempting to address TBTF, the European Union is falling into the regulate ’em and resolve ’em camps, leaning toward capital regulation and enhanced resolution regimes as a way to limit systemic risk. Given Europe’s prevailing universal banking model, policymakers have so far stayed well outside the shrink ’em camp.
But even while policymakers in Europe debate ways to tackle TBTF, the risks posed by big, interconnected banks are materializing once again, as the adverse effect of rising sovereign credit risk on euro-area banks has led to renewed concerns about systemic risk.
Moreover, Europe’s extensive public support of the banking sector under TBTF policy has left authorities with challenging questions about how to disengage this support fully without disrupting the nascent financial recovery. All these policy questions serve to illustrate the harsh tradeoffs and intractable complexities arising from the public–private intermingling entailed by TBTF.
Conclusion
For our capitalist system to work properly, it is important that successful risk taking be rewarded and equally important that unsuccessful risk taking be penalized. Legislators have done their level best over the past few months to, in effect, solidify this principle in our system.
For our capitalist system to work properly, it is important that successful risk taking be rewarded and equally important that unsuccessful risk taking be penalized. Legislators have done their level best over the past few months to, in effect, solidify this principle in our system.
That said, the race is far from over. Regulators now must pick up the baton and head for the finish line, using the authorities granted them in a manner that will ensure the safety and soundness of our system in the future. I would like to see us not waste this opportunity for true reform.
Just this morning, the Washington Post summarized the impasse that inevitably blocks treatment of the TBTF pathology. In an article on preparation for this weekend’s Group of 20 talks on bank reform, it was noted that “some” participants “remain hesitant to lean too hard on banks they consider vital to their national economies.”[12] This hesitancy only perpetuates the problem: The longer authorities delay the process, the more engrained behemoth financial institutions become; the more engrained they become, the less extricable they are. And so the debilitating disease of TBTF spreads. What appears “vital” becomes “viral” and grows ever more threatening to financial stability and economic stability.
I know the night is long, and I apologize for imposing the ponderous thoughts of a central banker upon you at this late hour. But go back to our aging couple and their fondness for the Ocean View Restaurant. In September, we will celebrate the 26th anniversary of the first announcement of the government’s TBTF policy. In September 1984, the Comptroller of the Currency testified before Congress that the government would not allow any of the nation’s 11 largest banks to fail. The Comptroller did, however, stress the need to find a way to deal with the potential failure of large institutions, and here we are today having failed to do so.[13] We can now keep kicking the can of TBTF down the road until dementia sets in and the banking system is made rotten by a refusal to acknowledge the pathology at the heart of the problem. Or we can use the occasion of the recent financial crisis to deal with it forthrightly while we are still vigorous and vital. I prefer the latter approach.
 |
About the Author
Richard W. Fisher is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Notes
The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System.
- As of the date of this speech, the tentative timeline shows the first open meeting scheduled for Wednesday, June 9.
- Sec. 165 of the Senate bill.
- Sec. 165 of the Senate bill.
- Sec. 165 of the Senate bill.
- Sec. 112 of the Senate bill.
- Sec. 204 of the Senate bill.
- Sec. 206 of the Senate bill.
- Sec. 210 of the Senate bill.
- For a brief history of capital regulation leading up to Basel II, see “Basel and the Evolution of Capital Regulation: Moving Forward, Looking Back,” Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Jan. 14, 2003.
- Sec. 165 of the Senate bill.
- “Texas Banking Conditions: Managerial Versus Economic Factors,” by Jeffery W. Gunther,Financial Industry Studies, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, October 1989, pp. 1–18.
- “Geithner Urges Swift ‘Global Agreement’ on Financial Reforms to Support Recovery,” by Howard Schneider, Washington Post, June 3, 2010, p. A12.
- “U.S. Won’t Let 11 Biggest Banks in Nation Fail,” by Tim Carrington, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 20, 1984.
Genetically Modified Foods Could Cause Long-Term Sterility
Warning: This Common Food Causes Devastating Offspring Defects in New Research Study
By Dr. Joseph Mercola
Mercola.com, May 22, 2010
In this interview, Jeffrey Smith, author of the bestseller Seeds of Deception, and Genetic Roulette, discusses the latest GMO research findings coming out of Russia, which adds fuel to previous concerns about long-term sterility and other highly bizarre physiological side effects.
Sources:
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
I strongly believe that one of the most obvious clues about the danger of GMO foods are that just about EVERY species of animal that is offered a GMO food versus a non-GMO food will avoid the GMO one. Many times they will do this to the point of starvation, as they have an intuitive sense of the danger of this food.
Please listen to the interview as Jeffery expands on this point in great detail. It’s one you can use to effectively share with your friends and family who are not yet convinced of the dangers of GMO foods.
If you have more time with them you can bring up the sterility argument that is expanded upon with these new research findings. You might have read this before that genetically modified foods may cause sterility in future generations but now the latest research from Russia provides shocking confirmation of this potential.
This study, which was conducted by the Russian equivalent of the US National Association for Gene Security, has not yet been published, but its findings were recently announced. It’s anticipated that the details will be published later this summer.
Russian Scientists Find Third Generation of Hamsters Sterilized by GM Soy
The release of this new information provides yet another health risk, and confirmation on earlier problems related to fertility, birth weight of offspring, and infant mortality.
In this feeding study they used hamsters, an animal which has not been previously featured in GM safety studies.
One group of hamsters was fed a normal diet without any soy whatsoever, a second group was fed non-GMO soy, a third ate GM soy, and a fourth group ate an even higher amount of GM soy than the third.
Using the same genetically modified (GM) soy that is produced on over 90 percent of the soy acreage in the US, the hamsters and their offspring were fed their respective diets over a period of two years, during which time the researchers evaluated three generations of hamsters.
First they took five pairs of hamsters from each group, each of which produced about seven to eight litters each, totaling about 140 animals.
At first all went well, but serious problems became apparent when they selected new pairs from the offspring.
The first problem was that this second generation had a slower growth rate and reached their sexual maturity later than normal.
However, this second generation eventually generated another 39 litters:
Nearly All of the Third-Generation GMO Babies Were Sterile!
But then an even bigger problem became apparent, because nearly all of the third generation hamsters lost the ability to have babies altogether.
Only a single third-generation female hamster gave birth to 16 pups, and of those, one fifth died.
In short, nearly the entire third generation of GM soy eaters were sterile. But it doesn’t end there.
In the GM soy-fed groups they also found an unusually high prevalence of an otherwise extremely rare phenomenon – hair growing inside the animals’ mouths. (You can see the images here.)
Says Smith:
Please remember humans have MUCH longer life spans than rats and that GMO foods were only introduced in 1996. This is LESS than one generation.
So we’re still nowhere near seeing the full effects of these potential ramifications in humans, as we’re only about 15 years into it. But if the effects are anything like the effects on numerous types of animals, we could be looking at sterility on a grand scale as our great-grandchildren grow up and begin to try to procreate...
The fact that the US is completely unwilling to implement the precautionary principle with regards to GM foods is incomprehensible in light of the findings we already have from animal studies.
Additionally, some 800 genetically engineered food applications have been submitted to the USDA, but not one single environmental impact statement has been prepared. So not only are human health ramifications ignored, but the entire eco system is being jeopardized.
Rampant Conflicts of Interest Put You and Your Family at Great Risk
Unfortunately, it’s clear that the US government is not in a position to make reasonable and responsible decisions related to GMOs at this point, when you consider the fact that the Obama administration has placed former Monsanto attorney and Vice President, Michael Taylor, in charge of US food safety, and serious conflicts of interest even reign supreme within the US Supreme Court!
That’s right. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is also a former Monsanto attorney, but refuses to acknowledge any conflict of interest as he’s hearing Monsanto’s third appeal for deregulation of genetically modified alfalfa seeds.
After corn, soy and wheat, alfalfa is the most widely grown crop in the US, so allowing GM alfalfa to be deregulated could spell disaster in several ways. It’s easily cross-pollinated by bees and wind, and it’s a perennial, meaning GM alfalfa could live on for years, spreading their genetically modified traits far and wide for a long period of time.
It remains to be seen how Justice Thomas rules in this case.
But in addition to conflicts of interest, we’re also dealing with government agencies that refuse to acknowledge the science produced by their own scientists.
Closely tied to the production of GM crops is the use of the herbicide Roundup, which contains glyphosate. Monsanto’s Roundup is the most widely used herbicide in the world, and contrary to the popular belief propagated by industry, pesticide use has significantly increased – DOUBLED since 2005 -- rather than decreased with the use of GM crops.
As it turns out, this is a serious problem for more reasons than one. Not only are GM food crops saturated with more pesticides than ever before, which naturally ends up in your body when you eat them, but glyphosate may also be killing the soil itself.
This startling conclusion comes straight from one of the USDA’s own scientists, Dr. Kremer.
However, his employer has opted to more or less ignore his findings, which, according to this article in Grist, include evidence that glyphosate causes:
More Evidence of Reproductive Problems from Eating GM Foods
But let’s get back to the infertility caused in animals.
The evidence of third-generation sterility in hamsters is just one link in a chain of studies that show evidence of this tragic side effect.
For example, back in 2005, Dr. Irina Ermakova, one of the senior scientists with the Russian National Academy of Sciences, reported that more than 50 percent of the babies from mother rats that were fed GM soy died within three weeks, compared to a 10 percent death rate among the controls.
Again, that’s a death rate five times higher than normal – identical to the findings in the hamster study above.
Similarly, the rats were also growing more slowly, just like the hamsters, and their offspring also had lower birth weights. And again, when the rats’ offspring tried to reproduce, they too were found to be mostly sterile, but it happened sooner, with infertility striking the second generation of rats, as opposed to the third generation of hamsters.
Ermakova wanted to perform further studies to analyze the organs she’d collected from the study, but she never got the chance. Says Smith:
However, she inadvertently stumbled upon further proof that GM soy wreaks havoc with reproductive health. She discovered that the rat chow being fed to all rats in the facility had been switched, so that all of it contained GM soy… Two months later she asked her colleagues whether or not they’d discovered any surprising changes in the infant mortality of their various studies, and yes indeed, they had!
Inexplicably, infant mortality in the animal studies performed at the National Academy of Scientific Laboratory in Moscow had skyrocketed to over 55 percent, sometimes higher.
There’s more evidence of reproductive health being harmed in various ways. Smith explains:
Now, if you’re damaging the young sperm cells, it could result in one of two things. They can result in infertility, or problems with the offspring.
Well, it appears that they may have had both.
In fact, with the mice, they looked at the offspring and they took the embryos out of the pregnant mothers and looked at how the DNA was functioning. And they compared the DNA of those who were born to GM soy-fed parents versus those who were fed non-GM soy and the DNA functioned differently.
So we’re seeing a fundamental change in the offspring of mice that were fed genetically modified soy, whose parents were also fed genetically modified soy.”
Other feeding studies using GM corn have also produced similar results. For example, mice fed GM corn had increasingly fewer and smaller babies the longer they stayed on the GM diet.
There are also plenty of reports about pigs, cows and other livestock having reproductive problems when fed genetically modified feed.
It’s Time to Save Yourself and Your Famiy Because White Knights Don’t Exist in Government
It’s important to realize that the key to ending the ongoing atrocity of GM foods lies not with government, but with you and me.
Consumers are going to have to drive GM foods out, and we CAN do it.
Through educating yourself, your family, friends and community about GMOs, and most importantly of all, through the food purchases you make, you can stop this unregulated science experiment.
Once we reach the tipping point, which is probably as little as five percent of the US population, the market WILL respond. They can’t afford not to!
Once enough people refuse to buy GM food products, it won’t be long before food manufacturers start switching their ingredients.
How to Sniff Out GMOs and Vote with Your Pocketbook
You CAN avoid GMOs, if you know what to look for.
First of all, remember there are eight genetically modified food crops:
The easiest way to avoid ending up with GM foods in your shopping cart is to do some pre-planning using the free non-GMO shopping guide, available at www.NonGMOshoppingGuide.com.
TheInstitute for Responsible Technology has also created a free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.
The shopping guide lists the various derivatives of each crop to be avoided, and even better, it lists hundreds of brand products in 22 food categories that are non-GMO, so if you’re still buying processed foods, at least you can easily select a brand that does not use genetically modified ingredients.
By Dr. Joseph Mercola
Mercola.com, May 22, 2010
In this interview, Jeffrey Smith, author of the bestseller Seeds of Deception, and Genetic Roulette, discusses the latest GMO research findings coming out of Russia, which adds fuel to previous concerns about long-term sterility and other highly bizarre physiological side effects.
Sources:
Institute for Responsible Technology, "Genetically Modified Soy Linked to Sterility, Infant Mortality"
The Voice of Russia April 16, 2010
Grist April 20, 2010
Jeffrey Smith Interview Transcript (PDF)
Huffington Post April 20, 2010
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
I strongly believe that one of the most obvious clues about the danger of GMO foods are that just about EVERY species of animal that is offered a GMO food versus a non-GMO food will avoid the GMO one. Many times they will do this to the point of starvation, as they have an intuitive sense of the danger of this food.
Please listen to the interview as Jeffery expands on this point in great detail. It’s one you can use to effectively share with your friends and family who are not yet convinced of the dangers of GMO foods.
If you have more time with them you can bring up the sterility argument that is expanded upon with these new research findings. You might have read this before that genetically modified foods may cause sterility in future generations but now the latest research from Russia provides shocking confirmation of this potential.
This study, which was conducted by the Russian equivalent of the US National Association for Gene Security, has not yet been published, but its findings were recently announced. It’s anticipated that the details will be published later this summer.
Russian Scientists Find Third Generation of Hamsters Sterilized by GM Soy
The release of this new information provides yet another health risk, and confirmation on earlier problems related to fertility, birth weight of offspring, and infant mortality.
In this feeding study they used hamsters, an animal which has not been previously featured in GM safety studies.
One group of hamsters was fed a normal diet without any soy whatsoever, a second group was fed non-GMO soy, a third ate GM soy, and a fourth group ate an even higher amount of GM soy than the third.
Using the same genetically modified (GM) soy that is produced on over 90 percent of the soy acreage in the US, the hamsters and their offspring were fed their respective diets over a period of two years, during which time the researchers evaluated three generations of hamsters.
First they took five pairs of hamsters from each group, each of which produced about seven to eight litters each, totaling about 140 animals.
At first all went well, but serious problems became apparent when they selected new pairs from the offspring.
The first problem was that this second generation had a slower growth rate and reached their sexual maturity later than normal.
However, this second generation eventually generated another 39 litters:
The no-soy control group had 52 pupsSo these second-generation GM soy-fed hamsters had a five-fold higher infant mortality rate, compared to the 5 percent normal death rate that was happening in the controls.
The non-GM soy had 78
The GM soy had only 40, of which 25 percent died
Nearly All of the Third-Generation GMO Babies Were Sterile!
But then an even bigger problem became apparent, because nearly all of the third generation hamsters lost the ability to have babies altogether.
Only a single third-generation female hamster gave birth to 16 pups, and of those, one fifth died.
In short, nearly the entire third generation of GM soy eaters were sterile. But it doesn’t end there.
In the GM soy-fed groups they also found an unusually high prevalence of an otherwise extremely rare phenomenon – hair growing inside the animals’ mouths. (You can see the images here.)
Says Smith:
“… it’s a very rare phenomenon but he [study author, Dr. Surov] had never in his life seen more hair in mouths of hamsters than with these GM soy-fed, third generation hamsters.”As you may know, genetically modified crops weren’t released until 1996, starting with GM soy, corn and cotton. Modified canola came about a year later.
Please remember humans have MUCH longer life spans than rats and that GMO foods were only introduced in 1996. This is LESS than one generation.
So we’re still nowhere near seeing the full effects of these potential ramifications in humans, as we’re only about 15 years into it. But if the effects are anything like the effects on numerous types of animals, we could be looking at sterility on a grand scale as our great-grandchildren grow up and begin to try to procreate...
The fact that the US is completely unwilling to implement the precautionary principle with regards to GM foods is incomprehensible in light of the findings we already have from animal studies.
Additionally, some 800 genetically engineered food applications have been submitted to the USDA, but not one single environmental impact statement has been prepared. So not only are human health ramifications ignored, but the entire eco system is being jeopardized.
Rampant Conflicts of Interest Put You and Your Family at Great Risk
Unfortunately, it’s clear that the US government is not in a position to make reasonable and responsible decisions related to GMOs at this point, when you consider the fact that the Obama administration has placed former Monsanto attorney and Vice President, Michael Taylor, in charge of US food safety, and serious conflicts of interest even reign supreme within the US Supreme Court!
That’s right. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is also a former Monsanto attorney, but refuses to acknowledge any conflict of interest as he’s hearing Monsanto’s third appeal for deregulation of genetically modified alfalfa seeds.
After corn, soy and wheat, alfalfa is the most widely grown crop in the US, so allowing GM alfalfa to be deregulated could spell disaster in several ways. It’s easily cross-pollinated by bees and wind, and it’s a perennial, meaning GM alfalfa could live on for years, spreading their genetically modified traits far and wide for a long period of time.
It remains to be seen how Justice Thomas rules in this case.
But in addition to conflicts of interest, we’re also dealing with government agencies that refuse to acknowledge the science produced by their own scientists.
Closely tied to the production of GM crops is the use of the herbicide Roundup, which contains glyphosate. Monsanto’s Roundup is the most widely used herbicide in the world, and contrary to the popular belief propagated by industry, pesticide use has significantly increased – DOUBLED since 2005 -- rather than decreased with the use of GM crops.
As it turns out, this is a serious problem for more reasons than one. Not only are GM food crops saturated with more pesticides than ever before, which naturally ends up in your body when you eat them, but glyphosate may also be killing the soil itself.
This startling conclusion comes straight from one of the USDA’s own scientists, Dr. Kremer.
However, his employer has opted to more or less ignore his findings, which, according to this article in Grist, include evidence that glyphosate causes:
-damage to beneficial microbes in the soil increasing the likelihood of infection of a crop
by soil pathogens
-interference with nutrient uptake by the plant
-reduced efficiency of symbiotic nitrogen fixation
-overall lower-than-expected plant productivity
More Evidence of Reproductive Problems from Eating GM Foods
But let’s get back to the infertility caused in animals.
The evidence of third-generation sterility in hamsters is just one link in a chain of studies that show evidence of this tragic side effect.
For example, back in 2005, Dr. Irina Ermakova, one of the senior scientists with the Russian National Academy of Sciences, reported that more than 50 percent of the babies from mother rats that were fed GM soy died within three weeks, compared to a 10 percent death rate among the controls.
Again, that’s a death rate five times higher than normal – identical to the findings in the hamster study above.
Similarly, the rats were also growing more slowly, just like the hamsters, and their offspring also had lower birth weights. And again, when the rats’ offspring tried to reproduce, they too were found to be mostly sterile, but it happened sooner, with infertility striking the second generation of rats, as opposed to the third generation of hamsters.
Ermakova wanted to perform further studies to analyze the organs she’d collected from the study, but she never got the chance. Says Smith:
“She told me as we were sitting at the EU Parliament after giving a presentation there, that her boss had been pressured by his boss.Neither am I.
So, she was told to do no more GM food study on animals, her documents were burned on her desk, samples were stolen from her laboratory, and one of her colleagues tried to comfort her by saying, “Well maybe the GM soy will solve the overpopulation problem on earth.”
She wasn’t impressed.”
However, she inadvertently stumbled upon further proof that GM soy wreaks havoc with reproductive health. She discovered that the rat chow being fed to all rats in the facility had been switched, so that all of it contained GM soy… Two months later she asked her colleagues whether or not they’d discovered any surprising changes in the infant mortality of their various studies, and yes indeed, they had!
Inexplicably, infant mortality in the animal studies performed at the National Academy of Scientific Laboratory in Moscow had skyrocketed to over 55 percent, sometimes higher.
There’s more evidence of reproductive health being harmed in various ways. Smith explains:
“[Ermakova] gave me a slide of a completely new study in which she fed male rats genetically modified soy, and it’s absolutely stunning.And this reminded me of what they had studied in Italy, where they fed mice genetically modified soy and they also had changes in their testicles, including damage to the young sperm cells.
On the left side of the slide is a pink testicle. On the right side of the slide, is a blue testicle.
She said that when the GM soy was fed to the male rats, it changed the color of their testicles from pink to blue, and you could see the cells on another slide, left to right, the structure of the cells in the testicle was different; a completely different blood flow.
Now, if you’re damaging the young sperm cells, it could result in one of two things. They can result in infertility, or problems with the offspring.
Well, it appears that they may have had both.
In fact, with the mice, they looked at the offspring and they took the embryos out of the pregnant mothers and looked at how the DNA was functioning. And they compared the DNA of those who were born to GM soy-fed parents versus those who were fed non-GM soy and the DNA functioned differently.
So we’re seeing a fundamental change in the offspring of mice that were fed genetically modified soy, whose parents were also fed genetically modified soy.”
Other feeding studies using GM corn have also produced similar results. For example, mice fed GM corn had increasingly fewer and smaller babies the longer they stayed on the GM diet.
There are also plenty of reports about pigs, cows and other livestock having reproductive problems when fed genetically modified feed.
It’s Time to Save Yourself and Your Famiy Because White Knights Don’t Exist in Government
It’s important to realize that the key to ending the ongoing atrocity of GM foods lies not with government, but with you and me.
Consumers are going to have to drive GM foods out, and we CAN do it.
Through educating yourself, your family, friends and community about GMOs, and most importantly of all, through the food purchases you make, you can stop this unregulated science experiment.
Once we reach the tipping point, which is probably as little as five percent of the US population, the market WILL respond. They can’t afford not to!
Once enough people refuse to buy GM food products, it won’t be long before food manufacturers start switching their ingredients.
How to Sniff Out GMOs and Vote with Your Pocketbook
You CAN avoid GMOs, if you know what to look for.
First of all, remember there are eight genetically modified food crops:
SoyBased on this list, anything containing soy or soy derivatives should be avoided, as well as anything containing corn, the most obvious ingredient being high fructose corn syrup.
Corn
Cottonseed (used in vegetable cooking oils)
Canola (canola oil)
Sugar from sugar beets
Hawaiian papaya
Some varieties of zucchini
Crookneck squash
The easiest way to avoid ending up with GM foods in your shopping cart is to do some pre-planning using the free non-GMO shopping guide, available at www.NonGMOshoppingGuide.com.
TheInstitute for Responsible Technology has also created a free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.
The shopping guide lists the various derivatives of each crop to be avoided, and even better, it lists hundreds of brand products in 22 food categories that are non-GMO, so if you’re still buying processed foods, at least you can easily select a brand that does not use genetically modified ingredients.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)